“[…], and the traffic noise that boomed in through the window was another reminder of what his spirit knew, that he was but a grain of sand in someone else's desert.”

— Malcolm Bradbury

Page 150.
Stepping Westward (1965)

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Malcolm Bradbury 25

English author and academic 1932–2000

Stephen Spender (1909–1995) English poet and man of letters

"I Think of Those Who Were Truly Great"
Poems (1933)
Context: What is precious is never to forget
The delight of the blood drawn from ancient springs
Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth;
Never to deny its pleasure in the simple morning light,
Nor its grave evening demand for love;
Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother
With noise and fog the flowering of the spirit.

“We call it a grain of sand
but it calls itself neither grain nor sand.”

Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) Polish writer

"View with a Grain of Sand"
Poems New and Collected (1998), The People on the Bridge (1986)
Context: We call it a grain of sand
but it calls itself neither grain nor sand.
It does just fine without a name,
whether general, particular,
permanent, passing,
incorrect or apt.

“There is nothing but God, nothing but the Goddess, nothing but Spirit in all directions, and not a grain of sand, not a speck of dust, is more or less Spirit than any other.”

Ken Wilber (1949) American writer and public speaker

The Eye of Spirit : An Integral Vision for a World Gone Slightly Mad (1997)
Context: The Realization of the Nondual traditions is uncompromising: There is only Spirit, there is only God, there is only Emptiness in all its radiant wonder. All the good and all the evil, the very best and the very worst, the upright and the degenerate — each and all are radically perfect manifestations of Spirit precisely as they are. There is nothing but God, nothing but the Goddess, nothing but Spirit in all directions, and not a grain of sand, not a speck of dust, is more or less Spirit than any other.

“Keep your hands open, and all the sands of the desert can pass through them.”

Taisen Deshimaru (1914–1982) Japanese Buddhist monk

As quoted in Zen to Go (1989) by Jon Winokur, p. 126
Context: Keep your hands open, and all the sands of the desert can pass through them. Close them, and all you can feel is a bit of grit.

“Boom! That's the house, right there, Robert. That's house I'm doing a B&E (breaking and entering)." He looked to me and he said: [shakes head and makes hissing noise through nose. Moment of silence. ] "I don't know what that means, but I'm doing it.”

Dane Cook (1972) American actor and comedian

Vicious Circle (2006)

“Just remember: If one bird carried every grain of sand, grain by grain, across the ocean, by the time he got them all on the other side, that would only be the beginning of eternity.”

Truman Capote book In Cold Blood

In Cold Blood (1965)

“When you peered into the windows of someone else's life, you could only guess what was going on.”

Elin Hilderbrand (1969) American writer

Source: Barefoot

“You try getting through the Hollows traffic with a stoned redhead hanging out the window shouting, 'I'm king of the world!' ~Lee”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: Black Magic Sanction

“Long before you knew what death was you were wishing it on someone else.”

Ray Bradbury book The Illustrated Man

Source: The Illustrated Man

“The divine is everywhere, even in a grain of sand; there I represented it in the reeds.”

Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) Swedish painter

Quote of Friedrich on his painting Swans in the Rushes (c. 1820), as cited in "Absent Presences in Liminal Places: Murnau's Nosferatu and the Otherworld of Stoker's Dracula" by Saviour Catania in Literature Film Quarterly (2004) http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3768/is_200401/ai_n9377557/print
1794 - 1840

“[…], and the traffic noise that boomed in through the window was another reminder of what his spirit knew, that he was but a grain of sand in someone else's desert.”

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Malcolm Bradbury 25

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